Strategic Political Communication Syllabus

“The world is still in want of clear-headed citizens, tempered by historical perspective,

disciplined by rational thinking and moral compass, who speak well and write plainly.”

Lee Pelton, President of Emerson College

Logistics

Grading

Short essays: 10% each, total of 40% (details below)
Final Exam: 25% (details below)
Major Paper: 25% (details below)
Participation and attendance: 10%
I will take attendance every class. Every unexcused absence will cost you 1% of your participation grade. Excused absences need to be approved in advance or sufficiently defended after the fact.

In addition to showing up, you are expected to meaningfully participate in the class discussions. This means doing and thinking about the readings, paying attention to the political world around you and thinking about it in terms of the course. You should have ideas and opinions and be able to defend them as critical ideas to be explored, not puppies to be protected. You should also be prepared to speak to your issue in every class. You will not be rewarded for just talking a lot.

Issues

Each student will be asked to select an issue to track over the course of the semester. Three of your short papers and your final research paper will focus on this issue. You should be prepared to talk about your issue in every class period.

Papers

No late papers will be accepted.

You will have four short essays and a final paper. The first short essay is a reflection on ethics, the other three focus on the issue you are tracking this semester. The final paper is a strategy for advancing the issue you choose. The details of the papers are in the schedule below and will be discussed in class.

Your short essays may be no more than two pages, double spaced. Extreme efforts to shrink fonts or extend margins to make an essay fit in two pages will be punished. I will stop reading the essay at the bottom of page two and grade you on what I have read. Your short essays should be emailed to me by the start of the class period in which they are due. Each short essay is worth 10% of your final grade (a total of 40%).

Your final paper should roughly be between 12 – 18 pages. Do not stretch a good 10 page paper to hit an artificial minimum, and do not cut short a great 25 page paper. Final papers are due in hard copy to me by the start of the final class of the semester. The paper is worth 25% of your final grade.

No Late Papers Will Be Accepted. If I do not accept a paper you receive a 0 on it.

Exam

You will have a take home final exam. The exam will be emailed out after the last class session and will be due at the end of the scheduled final exam period for the class. The exam is worth 25% of your final grade.

Readings

Books

On Writing Well by William Zinsser – Available in most decent bookstores and online

Everything else is listed in the schedule below

You can expect additional readings to be emailed throughout the semester

You have several ethical responsibilities in this course. This is a small group, in a small space, for several hours at a time. For this adventure to work for all of us, each of us needs to do the readings and think about them. We must respect each other’s positions on the readings, and honor intellectual experiments (the “what if….” positions); that means people should be willing and able to change their minds, to defend their positions, and challenge the positions of others. Critically, one should never confuse an argument with the person making the argument – positions are not people. This means you should not attack people, only their claims and you should do so based on reasoning. Similarly, you should defend your positions as if they were ideas to be kicked around, not children to be protected.

Cheating and plagiarizing are not acceptable. They will be punished to the greatest extent permitted by The George Washington University policy. All exams, papers, and other work products are to be completed in conformance with The George Washington University Code of Academic Integrity.